Sunday, July 22, 2007

the middle name game

Sara tagged us (me) for the middle name game. First I must post the rules, copied from her post:

Paraphrased rules: 1) post the rules, 2) list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name, 3) blog your list, 4) tag one person for each letter of your middle name, 5) comment-notify each taggee.

Hakim Baker doesn't have a middle name, but the guy at the keyboard here does.

T: Thomas was my Grampa's name. I like it. I like Doubting Thomas (Grampa was a skeptic/atheist/rationalist) and I like the Gospel of Thomas (I'm an agnostic gnostic, to put it one way).

H: Hard work is easier when I'm doing it for my community & love, as opposed to for a boss or money. (Community means people I like to be with.)

O: Orange is the color of the monarch butterflies in our yard, feasting on the milkweed, instinctively heading forth on their migrations for what they do not know. I guess they have faith. Or maybe they know but just let me think they don't.

M: Monday we start "eating only from our yard" day. I have no idea what that will mean for breakfast in eleven hours.

A: Alienation only barely begins to describe how far apart we are, how much we could have that we don't. There are so many people on the Internet, whom I like so much, whom I'll probably never see, it makes my heart ache. Alas. It's like dard, the beauty of the pain of longing.

S: Silence is how they worship God in the church I was raised in (Religious Society of Friends aka Quakers) (I'm from a very liberal strain of Quakers ... there's a few different kinds out there.) I'm not active in a Quaker scene any more--I, um, commune through a variety of means and like to use as many names for the Source as I can think of--but silence is useful and important. Maybe I'm more comfortable with it 'cause I'm an introvert anyway. Just in the past year I've learned "The proper response to a fool is silence" from this dude, who knows what he's talking about.

oops, well, "eat exclusively from our yard" day didn't work out. This time. Starting with breakfast, we decided we would stick with coffee (our most serious addiction) and granola (homemade but not from our yard!). Then short-notice company and ambitious chores kept us from harvesting much to fix for lunch, so we went with leftovers and decided to try again later.

Still, we ate pesto with local (farmers market) basil, and, later, taters, maters, and salad/sandwich greens from the farmers market too, and garlic from the yard.

Every summer I fall more deeply in love with the fresh local vegetables. The ugliest tomatoes are the tastiest! They have wabi.

I tried to edit this comment after I posted it but didn't see how so I deleted it and reposted this.